Insights - USC Shoah Foundation - University of Southern California

Voices from the Archive
Nearly 52,000 Holocaust survivors
and other witnesses gave their testimonies
to the Institute, from 56 countries and in
32 languages. The archive is filled with more
than 100,000 hours of unique life stories.
It would take more than 12 years to watch
every person’s testimony, and it would
be impossible to share all of their stories
in PastForward. Here is a brief glimpse from
the archive into the life of survivor Denise
Kandel, who also wrote an article for this
issue (see page 8). We invite you to view
her entire testimony, and the testimony
of her late brother, Jean-Claude Bystryn,
on our website at dornsife.usc.edu/vhi/
voicesfromthearchive.
Denise Kandel
Born February 27, 1933, Paris, France;
ISER AND SARA BYSTRYN were in Normandy, vacationing
with their six-year-old daughter, Denise,
Interviewed 1996, Riverdale, N.Y.
and their one-year-old son, Jean-Claude, when
Nazi Germany invaded France. Denise remembered
hearing the drone of aircraft in the sky.
“My mother was an eternal pessimist…so I’m sure she was very worried,”
Denise said.
Home in Colombes, a suburb of Paris, the air raids began. Sometimes they
lasted for minutes; sometimes they lasted for hours. Sara would take the children
down to the basement, but Iser did not share her apprehension. “He used to
say, ‘If there’s a little cloud in the sky, she’s going to see it.’ ”
Iser was from Poland. When the first major roundup of foreign-born Parisian
Jews began on May 14, 1941, he was ordered to report to the police. His wife urged
him not to go, but he did not want to disobey the authorities. “He said, ‘No, I’m
going to go. I should go.’ ” He did go—and was sent to a detainment camp.
Iser was able to receive letters, and his family was permitted to visit him once
a month. All their communications were monitored, so Sara would give secret
messages to her husband by hiding little notes in the pains d’épices (honey cakes)
that she sent him.
In Denise’s testimony, she said, “I don’t think I’m a good witness, because I
don’t think I remember enough of what happened in my life.” Yet she remembered
the period after her father’s detainment. While her mother went “from
office to office” each day to petition for Iser’s release, Denise was left to care for
her little brother. Each time her mother left the children alone in the apartment,
she would warn Denise not to let Jean-Claude make any noise in case anyone
came to the door.
Caring for Jean-Claude “really colored my relationship with him,” Denise
said, “because even after the war…I would tell him what to do, and it was a
really big source of conflict.”
Denise was also responsible for bringing
home the daily food rations. This meant waiting
in long lines, and there was always the risk
that the food would run out before her turn
came. “You always had to think of what to do
in order to maximize whatever it is that you
needed…which line to go in, when to go in line.
… You always had to think of what to do in
order to survive...”
After trying for months to get her husband released
from the detainment camp, Sara eventually
arranged for his escape. Iser was initially
unwilling to take the risk. Camp officials had put
him in charge of a barrack, and he feared that
other prisoners would be punished if he went
missing. One night in January 1942, the French
gendarmes (police) came looking for him at the
Bystryns’ apartment. Unbeknownst to his family,
Iser had finally escaped and was making his
way toward Lyons. The next morning, Sara and
the children left for the free zone.
Though Denise can’t recall how they were reunited
with her father, she does know that her
mother, her brother, and she fled to Southwestern
France, where Iser joined them. Iser had an
ulcer that required an operation, and in Cahors
they met a surgeon who kept him in the hospital
for six weeks so the authorities would not find
him. The surgeon also convinced the nuns at a
local convent to take in Denise and her brother,
but her parents had to look for shelter elsewhere—sometimes
in friendly homes, sometimes
in the woods but always on the move.
Jean-Claude spent every night at a neighbor’s
home because boys were not permitted to live in
the convent. Meanwhile, Denise tried her best to
blend in with the other girls. There was only one
problem: She had never been baptized, which
meant she could not take communion at Sunday
mass. “It added to the confusion and the fear and
the anxiety,” she recalled. “Every Sunday there
was a public display that I was not like everyone
else.” After much deliberation, her parents decided
that for her own safety Denise should be
baptized. Sara would go to the convent to give
6 pastforward Spring 2011